Review TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.11 No.2 Universal dimensions of social cognition: warmth and competence Susan T. Fiske1, Amy J.C. Cuddy2 and Peter Glick3 1 Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA 2 Management and Organizations Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA 3 Psychology Department, Lawrence University, PO Box 599, Appleton, WI 54912, USA Like all perception, social perception reflects evolutionary spontaneous impressions of presidential candidates, which pressures. In encounters with conspecifics, social animals entail both competence and integrity (warmth, trustworthi- must determine, immediately, whether the ‘other’ is ness) [1–3]. Impressions of leaders also involve these dimen- friend or foe (i.e. intends good or ill) and, then, whether sions and include image management (building trust), the ‘other’ has the ability to enact those intentions. New relationship development (warmth) and resource deploy- data confirm these two universal dimensions of social ment (competence and efficacy) [4]; although one could cognition: warmth and competence. Promoting survival, quibble over separating or combining trust and warmth, these dimensions provide fundamental social structural there is a core linkage between the two features, with trust answers about competition and status. People perceived and warmth consistently appearing together in the social as warm and competent elicit uniformly positive emo- domain. tions and behavior, whereas those perceived as lacking These public-sector results are borne out by studies warmth and competence elicit uniform negativity. People from Bogdan Wojciszke’s laboratory on how people con- classified as high on one dimension and low on the other strue the behavior of others. The basic dimensions of elicit predictable, ambivalent affective and behavioral warmth and competence account for 82% of the variance reactions. These universal dimensions explain both inter- in perceptions of everyday social behaviors [5]. Three- personal and intergroup social cognition. quarters of more than 1000 personally experienced past events are framed in terms of either morality or compe- Introduction tence [6], and impressions of well-known people show a Dark alleys and battle zones approximate the survival similar pattern [5] (reviewed in Ref. [7]). The terms used by settings of ancestral encounters with strangers. Evolution- Wojciszke and colleagues [5,6] are translated as ‘compe- ary pressures are reflected in social perception: on encoun- tence’ and ‘morality’, but the moral traits include fair, tering others, people must determine, first, the intentions generous, helpful, honest, righteous, sincere, tolerant of the other person or group and, second, their ability to act and understanding, which overlap with the warmth–trust- on those intentions. In the past few years, research has worthiness dimension that has been identified elsewhere. clearly established that perceived warmth and competence (There is no dispute over the competence label; these traits are the two universal dimensions of human social cogni- include clever, competent, creative, efficient, foresighted, tion, both at the individual level and at the group level. The ingenious, intelligent and knowledgeable.) In sum, when evidence for these dimensions comes from various sources, people spontaneously interpret behavior or form impres- including experimental social psychology laboratories, sions of others, warmth and competence form basic dimen- election polls and cross-cultural comparisons. Decades of sions that, together, account almost entirely for how people prior research supports the importance (and constant characterize others. recurrence) of the warmth and competence dimensions, under various labels (Box 1). However, only in the past five The primacy of warmth judgments years have cutting-edge studies of social cognition firmly Although warmth and competence dimensions emerge established that people everywhere differentiate each consistently, considerable evidence suggests that warmth other by liking (warmth, trustworthiness) and by respect- judgments are primary: warmth is judged before compe- ing (competence, efficiency). tence, and warmth judgments carry more weight in affec- According to recent theory and research in social tive and behavioral reactions. From an evolutionary cognition, the warmth dimension captures traits that are perspective, the primacy of warmth is fitting because related to perceived intent, including friendliness, helpful- another person’s intent for good or ill is more important ness, sincerity, trustworthiness and morality, whereas the to survival than whether the other person can act on those competence dimension reflects traits that are related to intentions. Similarly, morality (warmth) judgments deter- perceived ability, including intelligence, skill, creativity mine approach–avoidance tendencies, so they are the fun- and efficacy. For example, these dimensions appear in damental aspect of evaluation [8,9] and, therefore, precede Corresponding author: Fiske, S.T. ([email protected]). competence–efficacy judgments. People infer warmth from Available online 22 December 2006. the perceived motives of the other person [10]. Information www.sciencedirect.com 1364-6613/$ – see front matter ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.005 78 Review TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.11 No.2 Box 1. History of research on person perception In 1946, Solomon Asch [62] published a paradigmatic study in which calling trait lists ‘person perception’ was empirically tractable but undergraduates formed impressions of another person based on lists ecologically problematic. Some studies (e.g. Ref. [21]) addressed of trait adjectives (e.g. determined, practical, industrious, intelligent, ecological validity by providing pictures of stimulus persons engaged skillful), which also included either ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ depending on the in personality-revealing behaviors on two cognate dimensions, such experimental condition. The power of warm versus cold as ‘central as sociability and responsibility. However, these laboratory studies traits’ that dramatically alter impressions has been the stuff of entailed experimenter-chosen traits, which capitalized on the appar- introductory textbooks ever since. These impression studies demon- ent distinction between the two dimensions but brought into question strated the role of Gestalt clusters in social perception: a warm the perceivers’ spontaneously used dimensions. intelligent person is wise, whereas a cold intelligent person is sly. Fortunately, in parallel, impressions of others within small, Decades later, assuming that certain traits tend to separate into interactive groups were found to include separate social (warmth) clusters, Rosenberg et al. [22] asked undergraduates to sort 64 traits and task (competence) orientations [63]. Generations of Harvard into categories that are likely to be associated in the same person. university undergraduates in Robert Freed Bales’s self-observational Multidimensional scaling and subsequent analyses identified two small group class and interacting small groups in a variety of primary dimensions: social good–bad and intellectual good–bad. As organizations converged on these two dimensions [64]. The Bales Figure I indicates, socially good traits include warm (as found in Ref. system included a third dimension – sheer volume of interaction. This [62]) and sociable (as found in Ref. [22]), plus good-natured, happy, is probably most salient in the live interaction context but less salient popular and sincere; socially bad traits are their opposites. Nearly in stored impressions. orthogonal are the intellectually good–bad traits: intelligent, scientific, In sum, there is a venerable history of warmth and competence persistent, determined, skillful and industrious, and their opposites. dimensions that emerge in independent lines of research. One could Asch’s dramatic results for warm–cold could be explained by the add self-perception to this list (e.g. independent, agentic versus sociability dimension (warm–cold) being varied while the intellectual interdependent, communal) in addition to work on perceptions of dimension was kept constant [23]. The warm–cold manipulation gains social categories (e.g. the distinction between communion and its power to alter the Gestalt of an impression by tapping a agency in gender stereotypes). However, the various labels that have fundamental aspect of how people are perceived. been used for these basic dimensions had (until recently) obscured Nevertheless, the implications of these basic dimensions of person the pervasiveness and power of the fundamental, underlying dimen- perception did not reach total consensus immediately. Furthermore, sions of warmth and competence. Figure I. Two-dimensional configuration of 60 traits, which shows the best-fitting axes for the properties of social desirability and intellectual desirability. Reproduced, with permission, from Ref. [22]. about the moral–social dimension is more cognitively the extremity of that impression (i.e. how positive or how accessible, more sought by perceivers, more predictive negative) [5] (see also Ref. [11]). and more heavily weighted in evaluative judgments [5]. The warmth dimension predicts the valence of the inter- Importance of ‘other-profitable’ traits personal judgment (i.e. whether the impression is positive Moral–socialtraitsfacilitateorhinderotherpeople,